Software Update Bulletin: Antifa Action Pack Add-On

There is a new version available for the NPC Antifa Action Pack Add-On. NPCs running the optional Antifa Action Pack module are requested to update to software version 2.414 or higher at earliest opportunity.

Version 2.414 and higher fixes this issue

NPC-8689 NPCs in Manhattan enter AttackMode incorrectly. get beaten up

The defect can be observed in this video


The problem is in the ConfrontProudBoys.cpp module. Basically the GetFavorability() function had a bug where in some scenarios the score was calculated incorrectly. As a result of NPC-8689 the NpcFightGroup activated AttackMode incorrectly. From the video it can be seen the NPCs initiated the fight by throwing the bottle. So they were in AttackMode at that point.

This update fixes the heuristics behind GetFavorability() to give more weight to these factors in the calculation

• ratio of NpcFightGroup members to ProudBoysOpponent
• proximity of nearby police

Going forward the ratio must be at least 2:1. otherwise GetFavorability() will return a negative number and AttackMode will not activate. In the NYC video it was a straight up 4 on 4 square off of antifa NPC versus Proud Boys. Unfortunately the result was the Proud Boys kicked their antifa asses.

The police proximity is also given increased weight in the calculation. In the Manhattan video the Proud Boys put it to the defeated NpcFightGroup for some time before the NYPD cops come in and break it up. Previous versions did not properly account for the fight not going as planned and requiring police intervention if they lost. Starting in version 2.414 fixes this and AttackMode will not activate without some police nearby in case things go sideways in the fight.

The fallback behavior for GetFavorability() returning a negative number remains the same. In StagingMode NPCs in the NpcFightGroup are programmed to seek toward these goals

• shout insults at ProudBoysOpponent from a safe distance using the standard canned list of slogans and insults
• recruit additional nearby NPCs to join the NpcFightGroup

Urgent Message for Jordan Hunt

Jordan, please immediately update your software to version 4.5019 or higher. This version fixes the defect

NPC-8611 Unexpected counter to "what if she was raped" causes crash and violence

The manifestation of this defect can be observed in this video from Toronto


The problem is in the ConfrontProLife.cpp module. Basically there was a bug where if pro-life BadPerson has a reasonable response to "what if she was raped" (WISWR), then NPC does not have programming to continue the conversation. Instead a seg fault occurs in ConfrontProLife and npcOS panic reboots.

This can be observed in the video where Jordan was unable to verbalize a reply to the WISWR response and instead stands there with his tongue out for several seconds. The tongue out and silence demonstrates the crash and reboot.

Unfortunately due to another bug NPC-8618 the reboot is into FightMode. In FightMode NPC physically attacks the BadPerson previously conversing with. This can be observed in the video where Jordan irrationally roundhouse kicks the pro-life woman upon reboot in FightMode.

This bug is also fixed starting in 4.5019. Going forward an unhandled exception in ConfrontProLife.cpp will reset into WalkAwayAndWin mode. In this mode the NPC just calls the BadPerson a fascist and walks away to nearest nearby blue hair NPC for HighFive and PositiveFeedback, believing that he won the verbal confrontation with pro-life BadPerson.

Problematic Privacy Commissioner

Canada's Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien has been in the news lately mobilesyrup, Ottawa Citizen. He has been advocating for Canada to adopt a European-style "right to be forgotten"

Canada does not have a right to be forgotten. Commissioner Therrien understands this. He admits "Therrien has said there’s no explicit right to be forgotten in any Canadian legislation"

It's good that there is no right to be forgotten for many reasons. The main problem is that it is a "positive right". That is, it compels other parties to take some action or provide some resources to satisfy the "right" of an individual.

Rights, properly defined, belong to the individual. Someone might have the right to free speech, but that does not compel the government or established media to provide a printing press or an audience. A person might have the right to live where he chooses in a country, but that does not require the state to provide a moving truck or damage deposit to enable someone to move to a new city.

The right to be forgotten inverts this. It compels search engines to take an action to "forget" something that they know about. They are forced to agree to keep something secret. To take action to conceal something. To knowingly mislead those using the search service by concealing public information. This is especially corrosive because the issues are actually public record. Criminal convictions, bankruptcies, divorces, lawsuits against, professional censure. In living memory these things were published in the daily newspapers of record.

In the Europe court case it was a lawyer who wanted to keep a past bankruptcy secret. hmmm as a potential client I might want to know if a lawyer I was thinking of hiring had a history of being irresponsible about money and mismanaging money. Lawyers are often asked to hold clients money in trust. Anyway it is the responsibility of the consumer of the search result to evaluate the information returned and weigh different data points. To decide what is material and relevant and what is not. An individual may like to wish away black marks from the past but that is his problem, not the search engine.


The major issue with Daniel Therrien is that he is attempting to bypass Parliament and use lawfare to get a judge to create a right to be forgotten out of thin air. From the Citizen article.

The privacy commissioner wants the Federal Court of Canada to decide whether Canadians have the “right to be forgotten,” which would allow people to request that search engines remove old or embarrassing links about them.

Daniel Therrien is asking the court to decide whether Google falls under federal privacy laws when it displays search results about Canadians; if the court finds the search giant does, the company would have to remove some references when requested.

So that's wrong. Therrien concedes there is no right to be forgotten in legislation. Thus there is no such right. As privacy commissioner it's fine for Therrien to advocate for a right to be forgotten, or advise Parliament to enact such a right in legislation. It's not for the courts to decide. It's for the elected Parliament to establish rights.

Using the courts to bypass Parliament to advance his agenda is wrong and inappropriate to his office. Prime Minister Trudeau should fire Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien.

Doug Ford and the notwithstanding clause

Some news out of Ontario. A court blocked a move by Ontario Premier Doug Ford to reduce Toronto city council from 47 to 25 members. Ford has responded by saying he will invoke the notwithstanding clause of the constitution to overrule the court ruling and proceed. This will be the first time Ontario has invoked notwithstanding since the constitution was enacted in 1982.

It's an interesting case to invoke notwithstanding on. The intent had always been that notwithstanding would be used very sparingly, only in egregious or important public interest cases. For example suppose some judge ruled that incarceration was unconstitutional. That's the type of case where notwithstanding would be called for. I'm not against a more active use of notwithstanding myself. On this site I've advocated it for some cases in the public interest and to maintain public confidence in government
Sally Campbell
Abdoul Abdi deportation

also in the Omar Khadr case the correct move was to appeal appeal appeal any adverse court decisions in the lawsuit and then finally if necessary invoke notwithstanding. in no case does Canada pay off those who fight on the enemy side in a war, or participate in terrorism. I like to believe that Stephen Harper if he had won; would have taken that tack and in no circumstance would the taxpayers of Canada pay off Khadr for what he participated in. Alas the people elected Justin Trudeau who saw things differently.

On the face of it, it won't make an ounce of difference anywhere if Toronto city council has 47 or 25 seats. So on its own it's not the type of case that calls for notwithstanding. So what's up? I believe there is something else there, something important that needs to be discussed.

What I believe Ford is doing, is reasserting the jurisdiction of the elected assembly over the activist courts. I don't believe it's about the 47/25 thing on its own. This is the first time activists tried to use lawfare to block and frustrate a legitimate act by the Premier. So Ford, early in his term, is sending a very clear message to the activist judges and their allies. Those seeking to use the courts to frustrate and overrule the elected legislature and impose their own agenda.

Ford saw what happened with Trump and the courts blocking the immigration ban. He saw what happened with judges and the Trans Mountain pipeline. In a larger sense Doug Ford is right. For a long time now, decades really, there has been gradually increasing aggressiveness from the courts. Some of the cases and arguments in recent years demonstrate this. Appeals and arguments to "right to enjoyment of life", "fairness", and other dubious claims not in the constitution or any statute. these aren't rights, it's just "feels good" law, judges overstepping their authority to "make things right" for favoured groups.

in the past a judge might hear a case, express sympathy for the appellant, then note that the court does not have jurisdiction, or it is up to the legislature to repeal or modify an unfair or onerous law. it isn't for judges to create new rights where convenient, or strike down laws or ministerial decisions they personally disagree with. judges exercised restraint and caution, and in general left it to the legislature to make things right in the law, rather than imposing their own concept of law. since judges generally did the right thing on their own, there was no need to use or threaten to use notwithstanding.

somewhere over the years this changed. unsurprising really. Dalhousie University has a law school. Plenty of students who took courses or majored in Communications at Laurier went on to law school. Inevitably at this point, 20-25-30 years on now, these same students have taken their place and world view into the judiciary. Doug Ford is taking an important step in the legitimate use of notwithstanding to make an important course correction against lawfare and judicial activism.

Andrew Scheer and Maxime Bernier

It's a bit funny I had a post in mind how well Andrew Scheer was doing. Just keeping quiet. Save your good stuff, hold it back, wait for the election campaign. A wise man keepeth his own counsel. Let Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh stumble and bumble along, stay out of that.

Well so much for that. Scheer's conservative rival Maxime Bernier has now left the Conservatives and launched his own political party. Well that sucks for Scheer. As the saying goes, with Bernier, "It’s better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in." Well now Bernier is outside the tent.

It's too bad. Bernier has a lot of supporters and very nearly won the race to succeed Stephen Harper as Conservative leader. Honestly I didn't pay much attention to the Conservative leadership race and I didn't appreciate distinctions between the candidates. Though what I've learned of Bernier these last few weeks has made a positive impression. Pure laine Québécois. An energetic, patriotic Canadian who actually defended Canadian identity and culture (by insisting that Canadian culture is itself a real thing, which means that there is some optimum amount of multiculturalism beyond which we should not pass).

The thing about dairy and supply management. meh w/e to me. I don't have a strong opinion on it one way or the other. It would be nice if milk was less expensive in the stores. Still, individual dairy farms and the supporting industry around them are vital to rural life. There is a goodness about the rural/agriculture/industrial economy. I guess supply management has always been there as long as I've been alive. There is a lot of inertia around it. Maybe it has run its course. People will still buy and drink milk. There will still be cows and farms. So again I'm fine either way with whatever the Prime Minister wants to do with supply management in dairy.

It is unfortunate Scheer couldn't keep Bernier in the fold. The Conservative party has to actually be conservative. It has to stand for something. The feel-good situation with media darling Rona Ambrose when she was interim leader. Gleefully embracing gay marriage and trans- everything. That wasn't right for an unelected interim leader Ambrose to make major policy changes.

Scheer has said he tends toward Stephen Harper for philosophy. For some Scheer is seen more as a Patrick Brown type, offering some kind of Trudeau-lite alternative, tweaks here and there, the checkboxes can go, a bit less virtue signaling on twitter, more competent administration. While Bernier is perceived more the Doug Ford type, wanting to aggressively repeal and rollback the Trudeau agenda.

So what might unfold. If we take Bernier at his word then it's a lot like the Reform Party situation a generation ago. The "real" conservatives left the Progressive Conservative party they felt had abandoned them and started their own party. One result was several Jean Chrétien majorities. Though it was eventually successful. Terms were negotiated, the Conservative party was forged from Reform/PC, Stephen Harper became Prime Minister and had a strong run.

So is Bernier right, are we today back at the PC/Reform divide? Is the current Ambrose/Scheer Conservative party hopelessly lost, unwilling to be unpopular with a leftist establishment media, seeking only to be in office and the personal gains of being in power.

We will see I guess. One result is that Trudeau is suddenly in better shape for the next election. If Bernier's new party becomes a real thing then their votes would come from largely the existing Conservative and to a lesser extent disaffected Liberal voters. That could make things difficult for Scheer. I think a realistic plan for Scheer before all this was the Stephen Harper playbook when faced with a Paul Martin majority.

• hold Trudeau to a minority in 2019
• Scheer wins minority in the next election
• Scheer wins majority in the next election

alas all of that is up in the air now. Trudeau could well slide to a majority in 2019 from Bernier's success. Maybe interesting times after that.

Nova Scotia novice hockey half ice games

Nova Scotia novice hockey now half ice games. The reasoning at link.

Well I don't agree with it. I've seen half ice novice first hand. Hockey is supposed to be about the players. Remember the old Timbits slogan the first rule is to have run.

So the players, the 7 and 8 year olds. Remember the players? The young players unquestionably want full ice games. period. full stop. I'm concerned this will put some young players out of hockey.

Where did I get my data about what the players want? first hand, that's where. about 12 years ago there was a lack of full ice play. some young players were discouraged, even some of the advanced players were finding hockey to be a chore. back then some corrections and adjustments were made (unfortunately the season was essentially over, but it was a good gesture) and there was an emphasis again on games and full-ice games like the players wanted.

Half ice hockey is not a swap substitute for full ice. to the players it feels like practice, drills. the kids are fine with practice and understand they need to work on hockey skills development. but they practice to get ready to play in the real games. there has to be the proper balance between practice/skills and actual game play.

I get the arguments for half ice. at the time years ago parents were told in full ice the average novice player has 8 seconds of puck on stick time per game. and yes better novice players sometimes can just skate away with the puck. yet that is what the players want, full ice play. they are willing to get up for 6 AM practice for that 8 seconds a game when the puck is on their stick.

Minor hockey players at all levels need to develop puck protection, passing, receive pass. still I feel forced half ice is losing the forest for the trees. like spending the whole season at practice and never actually playing a game. practice, drills, and skills development is fine. but there has to be balance between practice and play.

There can be a perception among some novice parents that there is overemphasis on identifying and developing elite players. also statistically just as many strong players will quit as mediocre players if the hockey experience is not enjoyable with the proper balance of practice and games.

I would suggest a sensible compromise would be every second game half ice. the rest full ice. though the decision of the right balance of half ice/full ice games at novice should be made at the local rink by the local coaches. they are closest to the situation. these coercive mandates from on high from Hockey Nova Scotia and Hockey Canada are wrong.

It doesn't have to be all or nothing. make the information and data available to the novice coaches about half ice. listen to the novice players. and then trust the coaches to find the right mix that is best for the young players.